This deeply concerns me. A few days ago the mellifluous Irish left-wing vlogger, Maximilien Robespierre, posted a video asking if Keir Starmer was planning to push the privatisation of the NHS even further if or when he gets into 10 Downing Street. I didn’t see more than a few seconds of the video, but it seemed to be based on Starmer’s cagey response to how he would solve the country’s current crises. While Starmer has promised to repeal the anti-strike legislation, which would definitely be a great step if he actually does it, he answered that question by stating that Labour would not be spending its way out of these problems. This looks like an attempt to assure Tory voters that Labour is now fiscally responsible and no longer the high-spending party of traditional Tory caricature. But the current problems in the Health Service and other sectors are partly caused by decades of cuts and underinvestment. In the case of the NHS, the funding has also been gobbled up by increased administration expenses created by privatisation. So where is this extra investment, and improved services, supposed to come from? Blair tried to solve this by pushing the NHS’ privatisation further than Tories had dared. Not only were further NHS services outsourced to private healthcare providers, but he also created the Community Care Groups of doctors, who were responsible for commissioning medical services. These CCGs were granted the powers to buy in private medical services, and to raise additional income privately. Starmer is a Blairite, as shown by his vehement persecution of the Labour left and embrace of neoliberalism. One of the great commenters on this blog has suggested that he’s an admirer of the Swiss healthcare system. This is a mixture of state and private medical insurance, the degree depending on wealth. In the case of the very rich, it’s all, or nearly all, funded by private health insurance. In the case of the poor, it’s state-funded according to whether they can afford a level of private insurance. I have a feeling Nick Clegg of the Lib-Dems believed in the same kind of continental system. This obviously violates the fundamental principles on which Nye Bevin founded the NHS: that it should be universal and free at the point of delivery.
No-one wanted Blair to push through his NHS privatisations and there was electorally no need for it. By the time Blair was elected in 1997 the country was so thoroughly fed up of Tory misrule and their policies that Blair could have pursued a traditional Labour policy of renationalising it as well as funding it properly. But Blair was a Thatcherite and intensely concerned to get the Tory press and Tory voters onside, to the point that Rupert Murdoch has been described as an invisible presence at cabinet meetings. Blair’s pursuit of Tory policies left traditional Labour voters and members feeling betrayed and disenfranchised and the party lost both. They only continued winning elections because the Tories were worse.
I joined the Labour party a few years ago, inspired by Corbyn’s commitment to genuine Labour party policies and the protection and renationalisation of the NHS. I really don’t want to see it privatised by Starmer as Blair did.
If Starmer does push through further measures to privatise it, not only will he betray this country’s working people, making them poorer and with less available healthcare, then it will also have disastrous consequences for the direction of politics in this country. The recent surge of identity politics following the Black Lives Matter protests back in 2020 has also resulted in a backlash and the appearance of anti-woke parties further to the right, like Reform, led by Richard Tice, and Laurence Fox’s Reclaim. If working people become alienated from politics because whichever party you choose, economically they’re all the same, it leaves the way open for the far right. That was shown very clearly in Margaret Hodge’s neck of London, where Hodge did so little to tackle the rise of the BNP that the stormtroopers at one point had seven members on Tower Hamlets council. Their fuehrer, Derek Beacon, even sent her a garland after their squalid electoral victories. What has been shown to work against the fascist parties and unite working people of different ethnicities and religions is effective, traditional Labour welfare policies. These are desperately needed in themselves, but without them there’s the possibility that Britain may go the same way as the continent in the rise of extreme right-wing nationalist parties.
Renationalising the NHS and restoring the welfare state will not only massive improve the health, wellbeing and prosperity of the British working people, but will do much to stop the racial division and alienation fuelling the drift towards the parties of racial division, friction and resentment.
I also got this interesting piece of information yesterday from a message about their forthcoming events from the Labour Assembly against Austerity. The Socialist Campaign Group are organising a seminar on June 20th about what British socialists can learn from the successful, socialist policies of the Welsh Labour party. The snippet says
‘SCG SEMINAR: Learning from Welsh Labour’s Radical Agenda
Beth Winter MP // Mick Antoniw MS, Welsh Government Counsel-General // Jack Sargeant MS, Chair, Senedd Petitions Committee // Sophie Howe, Welsh Future Generations Commissioner // Darren Williams, Welsh Labour Grassroots
The next SCG online Socialist Policy Forum will look at the lessons we can learn from Welsh Labour’s new radical plan for government – which is helping to build a country that serves the many, not the few. This radical agenda includes: setting up a publicly owned energy company ■ a free National Care Service ■ free school meals for all primary school pupils ■ plans for Net Zero by 2025 – 15 years ahead of the UK-wide 2050 target ■ a national construction company to increase the numbers of social housing ■ and a Basic Income pilot scheme for care leavers.
Come along and learn about these progressive polices and how they can help the wider Labour movement win enough support to kick the Tories out of Downing Street.
This meeting is part of a series of socialist policy events organised by the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs in partnership with the Labour Assembly Against Austerity and Momentum.‘
I’m fully behind this. Welsh Labour are doing – and doing very successfully – what the Labour party in the rest of this great nation should be doing, but isn’t. Because Starmer is too in love with Blair and his legacy. And I expect as a result conditions for ordinary people will improve as they worsen in England. So you can expect the Tories to start complaining about something or other in Wales, which is terribly unfair, in order to divert attention from the failures of Tory laissez-faire capitalism. That’s if Starmer doesn’t help them by finding some way to close Welsh Labour down.
I also got this message today from the Stop the War Coalition detailing their protests and meetings across the country and appealing for people to get in touch if they also want to hold one. This is well beyond my abilities, but I’m putting this email up and its appeal in case there are readers interested in doing so, or attending any of the meetings that have already been planned.
‘Newsletter – 18/03/22
No to War in Ukraine
The horrific war in Ukraine continues so it’s vital that the anti-war movement works as hard as possible to cement our argument for an immediate withdrawal of Russian troops and a negotiated settlement, not no-fly zones and increased militarisation.
Our groups have been spreading the anti-war message by holding public meetings, rallies and teach-ins across the country. But we want there to be meetings in every single town and city so if you’re interested in hosting a meeting please get in touch…
Next Saturday (26 March), leading activists and experts are coming together for a teach-in on the war at London’s Mary Ward House, 5-7 Tavistock Pl, WC1H 9SN to look at the roots of the disaster in Ukraine and how to bring this war to an end.
We’re very pleased to announce that there will be anti-war speakers from both Ukraine and Russia joining us.
Tickets for this in-person event are limited so register as soon as possible to avoid missing out…
In January of this year over 400 civilians were killed or injured in airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition in their war on one of the poorest countries on earth – Yemen.
The war is approaching its seventh year. It’s a war in which British personnel produce the bombs, train the pilots, coordinate air strikes and gather intelligence. All while our government provides political cover and our media largely turns a blind eye.
Join us and Liberation on Zoom later in the day on 26 March to call for an immediate end to this horrendous British-backed war.
We’re pleased to announce that Stop the War’s 2022 AGM will be held at Mander Hall, Hamilton House, Mabledon Place, London, WC1H 9BD on Sat 23 April from 11am-4pm.
The AGM is where the policy and priorities of the coalition are discussed and decided, and where our steering committee and officers are elected. We hope that you will be able to join us and contribute to the discussions. All members are entitled and encouraged to attend.
Starmer has demonstrated his own true colours in all this by denouncing the Coalition as ‘a Russian stooge’. Jeremy Corbyn, who is an active supporter, has made it very clear there’s no evidence for it. Indeed, I don’t see any. In fact they have condemned the Russian invasion, as has Corbyn himself who also actively opposed human rights abuses in the former Soviet Union and in ‘democratic’ Russia.
This is exactly the same lie Thatcher and the Tories used against CND in the 1980s, along with the line that they were a Communist organisation. No, they weren’t. One of my College friends, who was left-wing, had been a member. And he told me that some of their members were definitely not people of the left. Like Enoch Powell, of ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech infamy. Powell had appalling views on race and was one of the first to promote the failed economic god of monetarism, but apparently he supported CND. So there was some decency in him.
As for Starmer, I see no decency or honour there at all, just a typical Thatcherite with no scruples and a thirst for power, lying and betraying every decent principle in order to get his rear end in No. 10.
One of the issues that concerns the opponents of the trans ideology is the massive expansion of the number of people identifying as trans or non-binary. Before the emergence of the trans craze a few years ago, there were relatively few trans people coming forward each year for treatment and these were mainly men. Now the number has dramatically increased and the majority of those now identifying as members of the opposite sex are young women. For writers and researchers like Abigail Shrier, this indicates that this is not a natural development but a social phenomenon, comparable to the growth of anorexia amongst girls and young women in the 1970s.
At the same time the number of young Americans declaring themselves to be gay has also expanded. Whereas the number of gay people in a population across the world was about 6 per cent, 3 per cent gay men, 3 per cent lesbian women, it’s now increased in the younger generation to 30 per cent. The gay American Conservative YouTuber, Matt Walsh, and Arielle Scarcella, a lesbian critic of the trans ideology on YouTube, have made videos about this. Walsh put it down to the ideological promotion of gayness by the woke, while Scarcella in her video considered that it was due to a massive mental health crisis amongst America’s kids. I think this is quite likely. The present generation of young people are facing worse lives and lower living conditions than their parents due to the Thatcherism and Reaganomics the previous generations embraced. The welfare net is being destroyed, right to work legislation in America has decimated the unions as has similar legislation over here, wages have stagnated while the cost of living is rising. Youngsters are encouraged to go for a college education, but the fees and costs are now exorbitant so that many will be saddled with debt for life. When I was at Bristol uni doing the Ph.D. ten years ago, i heard of American students saying that because of the money they were spending on their education, they would never be able to own property. Thatcher sold Brits the dream of owning their own homes when she sold off the council houses. That dream has turned sour, so that there is a massive housing crisis, not least due to the prohibition on building further council housing and a lack of genuine affordable housing. The pressures of the Covid lockdown, the isolation it has caused as well as job insecurity and further poverty, as the furlough cut incomes to 80 per cent of what they were and people are naturally worried about whether their jobs and businesses will survive, has increased this pressure. It’s no surprise that the medical authorities in Britain are reporting an alarming increase in anxiety, depression and other mental health problems.
It also seems to me to be quite likely that these pressures might lead some people to obsess over their sexuality, especially if gayness is presented as a positive, attractive identity. One of the gay critics of the trans movement a while ago commented on the adoption of the ‘queer’ identity by straight people. He felt that it was being taken up by them, even though they weren’t really gay, because they were allies and wanted to be part of the LGBTQ community. I wonder if something similar is going on with the people, who now identify of gay. In some parts of contemporary popular culture, gay people are depicted as virtuous victims of straight persecution. See the Batwoman tv series, for example, and the type of ‘SJW’ comics denounced by right-wingers like Ethan van Sciver of Comicsgate infamy. The positive depiction of gays in comics and popular culture in itself isn’t unreasonable. It’s no doubt much better now, but I remember the vicious homophobia of the 1980s. I am also not suggesting that people can choose the sexuality. What I am suggesting is that, in the absence of other ways to express their pain and distress, some young people may become convinced they’re gay as that’s the only way to respond to the terrible pressures put on them. It’s the only way they feel they can respond to their sense of persecution by a hostile, social and economic environment.
But I also believe that ideological indoctrination also plays a part. James Lindsay has shown that the Queer Theory underpinning the modern trans movement is not about helping gay and trans people deal with their problems or find a place in existing bourgeois capitalist society. Rather it’s about increasing their mental problems in order to create unstable, angry personalities susceptible to radical Marxist indoctrination. And even if this is not the aim, popular culture does seem to be playing a part.
Clive Simpson is a gay, anti-trans YouTuber. He posted a disturbing video a few days ago about a little American girl, Chloe, who has now decided that she’s non-binary and wishes to be known as Clarke, with the corresponding changes in gender expression. This came after her mother was reading a book to her, which was intended to explain non-binary people. It said that some people are boys, some are girls, and some don’t believe they’re either boys or girls. The child said that was her, and that was how she felt.
Simpson cites a medical paper on the development of children’s sexual identities. It states that they usually develop it by age three, but it may not become fixed until they are seven. So some children’s gender identity is rather fluid until it naturally settles down. The book the mother was reading from was aimed at 4-8 year olds.
If the paper is correct, then the mother may have intentionally done immense harm to her daughter’s psycho-sexual development. What might have been merely a passing phase that many children go through has now been turned into a permanent identity, with the sense of alienation from society and one’s own biology this may bring.
I can understand the mother wishing to teach her daughter the same liberal values she holds, but it appears from this that teaching children about such issues so young may harm the child’s own psychology.
It would be much better if this was left later to an age when the child could understand it without it undermining their own gender identity.
Despite Starmer’s less than stellar performance at the Labour party conference, Britain’s wretched press continues to regard him as the saviour of the Labour party. Yesterday’s I had their columnist Stephen Bush opining that the bargain basement Stalin had put Labour’s house in order. There was also a piece by Ayesha Hazarika, another Blairite Labour MP, giving readers the benefit of what she would like to say to Keef. And on Wednesday the Depress quoted Stalin as telling his audience, or possibly just the Depress, that Corbyn nearly destroyed the Labour party.
This is untrue. Corbyn didn’t destroy the Labour party. Under his leadership its membership expanded until it became the largest socialist party in Europe and it outstripped the Tories’, who had up to them been the larger party. These members paid membership fees, and so the party’s finances were very healthy. And his policies were and are massively popular with electorate. They wanted the renationalisation of the utilities, an end and reversal of the privatisation of the NHS, a strong welfare state and strong trade unions, proper rights at work and strong trade unions that actually protect working people. But these policies are anathema to the Thatcherite establishment, and particularly the Blairites who are trying to turn the Labour party in Conservatives .2.
And so the press and media vilification began. This initially just concentrated on calling him a Communist or Trotskyite, which was taken up by people who really don’t know what either of those actually are. But this didn’t actually make much of a dent in his support. Far more damaging was the accusation from the Zionist establishment of the Jewish community – the Board of Deputies, Chief Rabbinate and press – that he was a vicious anti-Semite because he spoke out in favour of the Palestinians. This was eagerly taken up by the wider British establishment, and used as a weapon by Corbyn’s enemies in the Labour party to undermine him. They did so by smearing and expelling his supporters.
Meanwhile the Blairites in Labour plotted a series of coups, ostentatiously resigning from his shadow cabinet live on television, and gave interviews to the press attacking him at every opportunity. The Blairite bureaucracy actively conspired to throw the 2017 and 2019 elections, and actively withheld from their leader the extent of real anti-Semitism in Labour in order to further blacken him. They also bullied and abused Black and ethnic minority MPs and activists like Diane Abbott and there is, thanks to them, a rise in Islamophobia in the party.
Now Corbyn did make some serious mistakes. I’ve heard it said that he should have purged the party bureaucracy of the Blairites, as was expected when he took over as leader. He didn’t, and so made a rod for his own back. But the most important was that he took the anti-Semitism accusations in good faith. Instead of defending his supporters from the spurious charges, Corbyn threw them under the bus in a policy of appeasement. This didn’t work and ended, as Tony Greenstein predicted it would, with Corbyn himself being personally attacked and ousted.
But Starmer’s leadership has been disastrous. After publicly embracing Corbyn’s policies, he started betraying them and the party’s left-wing membership almost as soon as he got the leadership. He broke all his election promises and blithely carried on the purge of left-wing members, all on the pretext that they were terrible anti-Semites. Even when the vast majority of those accused have been decent, self-respecting Jews. People, especially Blacks, Muslims and ethnic minorities, are leaving his racist Labour party in droves. In contrast to his attacks on the left, he has said little against Boris Johnson’s corrupt, inept government. Before last week most Brits didn’t know what he stood for. Now he’s come out laid his Blairite vision of Labour policy before the country. But this hasn’t increased his popularity either. Yesterday Tory vlogger Michael Heaver put up a video showing that Labour was still behind the Tories in the polls, and in fact their popularity had fallen slightly by a point during the conference. And among working class voters the Tories were massively ahead. Well, the Blairites were never interested in working class voters. They wanted middle class voters, and as a result, Blairite Labour is paying the price.
With supporters and members abandoning the party, its finances are in crisis and it is near bankruptcy. Starmer is trying recruit people, who aren’t traditionally Labour (meaning presumably Tories) as members and MPs, but they’re not coming forward. BFAWU, one of the founding unions, has disaffiliated and if more follow it will tear the historic guts out of the party. And under Starmer the party lost a swathe of local authorities and by-elections, thanks to his refusal to respect the Brexit vote in the referendum. Labour is on the point of collapse, but he’s been talking up what few victories he’s had as if they were splendid and overwhelming whereas in fact Labour barely held on to the contested seats.
But nevertheless, the Tory press are trying to delude this country that he’s made the party electable again and that somewhere down the line they’ll be in power.
Here’s Heavers video about the Labour poll results.
For a brief period about 1991 I tried pursuing a research degree in British Islam. I ended up giving it up because it would have been mostly sociology and I was having difficulty getting informants, and because I found it difficult to cope with some of the anti-Christian polemic. I’ve Muslim friends, and didn’t want my experience of this material poisoning my relationship with them or my overall view of British Islam. I’ve blogged before about the passages I found in books published by British Islamic publishers like TaHa calling for autonomous Muslim colonies in the UK. But one of the very worst books I found was one of the college bookshelves literally demonising Whites. This was published in Pakistan, but in English and so clearly aimed at the global Muslim community. It was written by someone who had clearly spent time in Britain before moving back to Pakistan. And a fair section of it was loud denunciations of White Brits and British society for being mean and racist.
In the years since, I forgot its title, but the book’s sheer vitriol has stayed with me, and I do think that it and books like it are fuelling the rise of militant Islam around the world and the alienation of many western Muslims. Among the book’s claims was that the White peoples of Europe, particularly those who speak languages related to German, Dutch, English and the Scandinavian languages, are the descendants of the tribes of Gog and Magog, known in Islam as Juj and Majuj. These are anti-Muslim peoples, the servants of al-Dajjal, the Muslim equivalent of the anti-Christ in Christianity, who were walled up behind a mountain chain by the Islamic hero Dhu’l-Carneyn. I went Googling for it yesterday to see if I could find it on the internet. I think I have, or something very like it. It’s Cain’s Creed, The Cult(s) of Rome, by Dr. Omar Zaid. The book seems to be largely a rant directed against the Roman Catholic church and particularly the Jesuits, as well as, inevitably, the Jews. It draws heavily on the bonkers 19th century anti-Catholic Protestant diatribe, the Two Babylons. If it isn’t that book, then Zaid’s is very like it and certainly following it ideological line in the demonisation of White Europeans. Zaid put up a blog post about his wretched tome, which contains this dainty little passage.
This region (Anatolia, Syria, Lebanon, Khazaria etc.) is a major focus of Monotheism’s eschatology and deviancy as it holds ancient houses of satanic cults that are directly related to the present globalist menace. It appears that Gog & Magog refer to the peoples descended from Tubal-Cain and Noah’s errant stock that became Slavonic and Teutonic Caucasian Races respectively and then trod in all directions during the course of two dispersions, reaching Egypt, Persia, Pakistan and beyond.
See ‘GOG & MAGOG BY DR. OMAR’ at Gog & Magog by Dr. Omar – zaidpub, which is an extract from Omar Zaid’s book, Cain’s Creed, The Cult(s) of Rome, published by Dar al-Wahi.
If it is the same book, then it also contains long passages ranting about how Whites Brits are all racist and callous. He states that we don’t care if an elderly woman dies in the street, but shamefully get upset about the maltreatment of dogs, which are an unclean animal in Islam. But he’s also massively impressed with how wealthy the country is, which betrays something of the mentality of the hostile invader. It very reminiscent of Napoleon’s description of Britain – ‘a good land with a bad people’.
Now I’m very much aware that this is only one book, but I can remember that as an undergraduate studying Islam for my Religious Studies minor that one of the lecturers told us that some of the material being published in Pakistan was vitriolically anti-Christian. This was nearly forty years ago, and I think the situation must have become much worse since as the country has become intolerantly religious. Christians and other religious minorities, like the Shi’a and Ahmadis are increasingly persecuted, accused and imprisoned under spurious blasphemy charges or murdered in mob violence.
Now I am very definitely not trying to demonise Muslims here by posting about it. I’m very aware of the rise of Islamophobia, especially as stoked by Boris Johnson and the Tory party, despite their denials. I can quite believe that the author was the victim of terrible racism in Britain, having heard of some of the ‘pranks’ and maltreatment meted out to Asian workers at the time and more recently.
But I wanted to discuss this to make the point that other nations and cultures too have their own prejudices and racial hatreds. The BLM protests have renewed discussions and attacks on White western racism, but there is little or no discussion or examination of Black and Asian prejudice. This exists, but is denied and any mention of it suppressed or silence by accusations of racism in turn. You’re a racist bigot if you dare talk about anti-White racism in Britain or elsewhere. And so we have a very unbalanced view where all Whites are increasingly seen through the lens of Critical Race Theory as embodying White privilege and embedded in a racist system, while any attempt to discuss Black and Asian anti-White racism is furiously denied.
This has to change. All forms of prejudice and racial hatred have to be fought and attacked, even if this is uncomfortable for parts of the Left.
Because if it isn’t, the Tories will exploit it to divide the working class and inflict more misery, poverty and death on working people of all colours and religions.
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